Page 84 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

Cultural business models on the Internet84In other cases the conversation takes place solely between two people, such as when it occurs at a touch point. Here too dialogue skill is proving increasingly more fundamental, as more complex products are being developed and users are better informed. An example – probably extreme but real – of the importance of dialogue skill is Zappos, a company that holds the record for the longest phone call kept up by the customer services: ten hours (Shamo, D., 2014). The main point here isnot the duration of the call itself, but two considerations: first, that the customer service person who remained in their post for such a long time was capable of doing so; and second, that they knew what they had to do. The first is a question of skill, no doubt stemmingfrom the training this company provides toits employees. And the second is a question of attitude, which also stems from the strategy of the company, whose customer-centred vision is evident from this extraordinary record.At the organisational level, the effect of the importance of communication is being chiefly felt by communications directors. A reportby Top Comunicación & RRPP and Bur- son-Marsteller (2013) shows that this position will increase its strategic importance in the near future. According to this report, these profes- sionals are expected to control the new media, to be capable of globalising brands, to administer large volumes of content, to manage online crises, and to demand greater transparency and dialogue with various interest groups. They are also expected to address different challenges and problems in their work, such as microcommu- nication as opposed to mass communication,the handling of huge quantities of information,the degeneration in journalistic values, working with unreliable sources and the challengeof internal communication in organisations increasingly formed by temporary joint ventures of goal-oriented professionals.Dialogue skill and how companies communicate with the public is transversal and affects all their employees.All these changes can be seen in corporate communications, but they are in fact new competencies that go beyond this field and are necessary to several tiers of the organisational pyramid. The reason is that they express the new way companies must communicate with the public at which their value proposition is target- ed. And this work, communication, is no longer in the hands of a single department owing to the intensity and variety of channels the digital medium provides.A final thoughtDigital technological skills, self-directed learn- ing, collaborative work in various environments, the search for and management of information, the identification of trends, the design of memorable experiences and communication and dialogue skills are competencies that are now essential in the digital age. And, perhaps more importantly, they are skills that are transversal in practically any work. In a complex market that operates in a hyperconnected digital world, it is no longer possible for professionals to work inThe digital competencies of organisations: the challenge of digitally transforming talent